The pro-Hamas organization that co-sponsored the Columbia “Resistance 101” campus planning event we covered earlier this year has been targeted as a terrorist front group by the United States and Canada.
In a joint action announced on October 15, the United States designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, or “Samidoun,” for sanctions.
Canada, where the group is based, listed Samidoun as a terrorist entity. The group has already been banned as a terrorist organization in Israel and Germany. Last week, the Dutch parliament voted to designate Samidoun a terrorist organization.
Samidoun describes itself as an international network to support Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But it’s a “sham charity,” the joint statement says: “Organizations like Samidoun masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups.”
Since 2019, American Express, PayPal, Donorbox, Plaid, and Discover have reportedly stopped processing funding for Samidoun and their fiscal sponsor, the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), due to its terrorist ties.
Samidoun raises funds for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US-designated terrorist group operating in Gaza and the West Bank. The PFLP participated in the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
The US government’s action prohibits individuals and institutions from doing business with Samidoun. But, according to NBC News, because the State Department hasn’t designated it as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), “it’s not a crime for protest groups to meet with Samidoun to organize demonstrations or to feature its members in webinars.”
The joint notice also designates Khaled Barakat, a leader of the PFLP, for sanctions.
Together, Samidoun and Barakat “play critical roles” in raising money for the PFLP. They are also related by marriage.
Barakat is the spouse of Charlotte Kates, co-founder and director at Samidoun. Earlier this year, Kates praised the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians as “heroic and brave.”
The husband-and-wife team appeared together at the “Resistance 101” webinar in March.
At the event, Kates told students “there is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas,” praising its “leadership role” in raping and murdering its way through southern Israel. “These are the people on the frontlines of defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.”
Kates urged them to join as coalition comrades in the war against the US and Zionist oppression. The goal, she said, was to “come together and make support for the resistance as popular as possible.” And that resistance is justified “by any means necessary.”
But “resistance” is code for “terrorism,” explains NGO Monitor in its report on how the PFLP and Samidoun have infiltrated American college campuses. As soon as the anti-Israel encampments and protests began this past spring—and as if on cue—the PFLP issued a statement confirming its “support for the struggle of the students youth movements, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) at universities such as Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, Stanford, among others.” “We call for enhancing the unity of students and their struggle to divest American universities from the zionist entity and cut all forms of relations with it,” the group added.
Both the PFLP and Samidoun are behind the pro-Hamas campus protests; their signs, flags, and posters at the events are all documented and on display at NGO Monitor here.
So are Samidoun’s true colors, Prof. Gerald Steinberg posted:
Here is more fresh evidence of Samidoun’s support for terror:
And here, where they speak for themselves:
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